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Wednesday, 17 October 2012

Milton Keynes again

This time, the Orange series. Again, on the bike.

I drove up the M1 to get there, but when I turned off, I made a serious mistake, and found myself back on the southbound lane, so I had to drive south for 7 km, get off at the next junction, and then repeat the 7 km north again. Second time around I got it right.

I started at number 7, so that I could get down to number 28 and back, then do the easy (i.e., on the road) caches 1 to 6 later.

Number 7 was a multi, so I collected the numbers on my way through the golf course (which meant I had to walk the bike quite a lot). At the final, it was a quick find, then on the bike for the road south.

Another multi en route, also threatened to go through a golf course (this area seems to be stiff with golf courses). But I'd had a look at it in advance, decided that I knew where the final would be, and went straight there, which meant I could go by road, which is much easier on the bike, and I avoided the golf course.

Because I'd skipped the first six caches, by the time I got to where the bonus probably was, I was still missing one of the numbers, and it was an important number. So I made a heroic assumption, which plotted to an unlikely place, but I was fond of my assumption and went there anyway, and after a brief scout around, I saw something that shouldn't have been, and it was the cache.

So on I continued, picking up a few not from the series along the way, until I'd done number 27, leaving only number 28. But that was 350 meters across a very soggy-looking field, so I decided to walk it rather than try to bike. I chained up my bike to a handy tree ... and that was when I discovered that somehow, the lock had broken while it was in my saddle bag. New lock required! Never mind, I trudged across the field, which was even soggier than it looked, got the cache, and went back to the bike. So that was 7-28 done.

On the way back north to the car, I picked up several more caches along the way. And when I was about a kilometer from the car, instead of beetling back to it, I thought, hang it, let's do 1-6. So I did those, then back to the car. And that was why lunch happened at 17:30.

By that time I'd done 41 caches, was pretty tired from the day's efforts, and had to be back home for a dinner with ladysolly, daughter.2 and daughter.2.so, so I went home. A good day out!